Breathing in and Letting Go
by quinnovative
Summary: Based on a prompt about Kara and Lena starting a relationship while Kara struggles to come out to Alex.


**A/N:** Hey everyone! This came from a prompt I received about Kara and Lena being in a new relationship, while Kara struggles to come out to Alex.

(There's established supercorp and Lena knows Kara is Supergirl.)

* * *

A sigh writhed from Kara's lungs and dangled in the air.

"Kara," Lena said softly, gazing across the table and watching Kara fidget with the edge of the cloth napkin in one hand, while the other used a fork to push pasta around her plate. "Are you all right?"

Kara nodded, dim gold light glistening in her eyes before she tore them away from the open window, where the moon illuminated the sidewalk beneath it, and turned her sight onto Lena. "Yeah, I just—" she blew out a breath and lowered the fork, letting go. "This feels wrong."

A weight plummeted in Lena's chest.

"Is it—do you want to go somewhere else?" Lena had placed reservations at the Italian restaurant weeks ago, had called herself to secure a table on the peripheral, closest to the windows by the water where the breeze carried with it a hint of salt and new beginnings. With her fingers running circles around each other, Lena tilted closer and voiced her concerns in a strained whisper. "Is it—is it us?"

"No!" Kara lurched forward, glasses rattling as the table rocked. "No," she repeated, softer, standing and taking Lena's hand in her own. "No not at all, I'm sorry for making you think that. This is perfect, Lena. You've been so wonderful and being with you has made me happy in ways I never thought possible."

Lena's hand remained limp in Kara's. "But?"

Kara dropped back into her seat, the fire in her eyes snuffed as quickly as it had risen. "Keeping this from Alex makes me feel sick."

"Oh," Lena sighed and squeezed Kara's hand. "I can tell. You've hardly touched your dinner."

"I know," Kara lamented. "And it's _good_ pasta."

Lena laughed, relief spilling out of her, and ran her thumb over Kara's knuckle. Lena's head tilted as she addressed her girlfriend, and moonlight cast a ring onto her dark hair. "You're entitled to taking as much time as you find necessary, but I can see this secret straining on you, Kara, and of all people, you shouldn't have to carry any more of that weight."

Kara's lips upturn at one corner in a wistful smile. With a parting squeeze, she released Lena's hand and adjusted her glasses. "Could we please talk about this later? Right now, I'd just like to eat this _amazing_ food," she did her best to flash a smile at Lena, even as her heart remained tight in her chest. "and hear about your day, if that's okay?"

Lena nodded and took a sip of her wine, letting a smile ease over her features. "Well, today I realized that Eve and Jess have been conspiring to surprise me for my birthday for the past few months."

"Aw," Kara cooed and let a pout take over her lips. "That's so cute, what are they planning? You didn't shut it down, did you?"

"No, I decided to let it play out this time," Lena shook her head and grinned, continuing to fill Kara in about her day. Kara sunk into Lena's words and buried her concerns beneath them.

/

Three days later Kara and Lena made their way to game night together, their first time as a couple.

Kara bit her lip and turned to Lena.

"We can't—we have to be careful," Kara said as she dropped Lena's hand in the hallway leading up to Alex's apartment. "She can't know, I haven't…"

"Okay." Lena nodded and tucked her hand into her coat pocket to make up for the sudden lack of warmth.

"Sorry, I just—"

"Hey." Lena paused midstride and tilted her head. "You have no reason to apologize; all on your own time, okay?"

"Okay." Kara nodded and allowed an easy smile to take over her features. "We'll still have fun, though? Like normal times."

"Of course."

Lena squeezed Kara's hand and Kara stepped forward, knocking on the door. A moment later it swung open and Sam appeared, grinning and drawing them into the chaos behind her where games were strewn across the floor and debate had begun about which to play first.

/

"Kara? Kara?"

She blinked, bottom lip pinched between a thumb and bent knuckle, and her eyes remained locked on a point across the room.

" _Kara_!"

Something soft crashed into Kara, bouncing off her side and falling to the floor. She looked down to see a pillow at her feet, eyes trailing back up to the source.

"What?" Kara asked with a slight edge tugging at her words.

"Are you okay?" Alex pressed, brows furrowed.

"Yeah, of course." Kara straightened her spine and adjusted her glasses.

From the kitchen, Lena angled herself toward the living room, catching the edge in Kara's voice.

"Are you sure? You and Lena seem kind of distant, and you've been quiet all night. I mean you barely opened your mouth during charades—which is _not_ like you." Alex knocked her knee against Kara and shifted so they were facing each other, tossing one arm over the back of the couch as the rest of the group separated to refill snacks and pick the next game.

Kara swallowed hard against the tightening in her throat. Her voice straining at the end of her denial that anything was wrong. Heat flooded her cheeks and she fought the urge to slide back or slip away as their company started returning, Sam plopping onto the couch beside Alex, while James settled into a chair at their right.

"Kara," Alex's voice quieted. "You're not good at hiding things, I know you're upset, what's going on?"

The heat across Kara's face turned to flame, radiating through her body. She parted her lips, fumbled with words on her tongue when Lena approached the couch while looking at her phone, scrolling through something on the screen and typing out a reply.

"Kara, sorry to interrupt," she began, waving her phone in apology. "But there's an incident at CatCo that needs my attending to, I just received a message from Eve—something about one of the most recent columns? Anyway, I'm hoping the matter can be resolved over phone, but your knowledge would be helpful. Do you mind stepping out with me for a moment?"

Kara nodded quickly, keeping her mouth shut and the words clamped inside her.

"What is it?" James asked, hands on both armrests prepared to lift himself out of the chair. "If it's about CatCo, it involves me, too."

"Not this," Lena dismissed with a shake of her head. She kept her gaze on Kara where she was sitting, spine too straight, hands twisted in her lap. "Kara?"

She nodded again, scurrying off the couch and tripping over the pillow Alex had thrown, before following Lena.

"Don't feel obligated to wait for us for the next game," Lena said, lingering in the doorway and sending the group a remorseful look. "The problem might take a few minutes to correct."

The door closed, and, in the sanctuary of an empty hall, a breath shoved its way from Kara's lungs, hot and weighty. She leaned back against the wall, exhaling again and looking toward Lena.

"Sorry," Kara whispered with flushed cheeks after a beat of silence. "I—What's happening at CatCo?"

Lena shook her head. "Nothing, I made that up."

"Oh. Thanks." Kara tipped her head back and tangled her hands above it, shaking her head. The wall pressed against the back of her skull. A reminder of solidity. "I don't know what's happening. I can't do this, Lena."'

The quiet following her words gathered a tangibility as Lena waited for her to continue. She stood in front of Kara, giving her space and fighting the urge to entwine their fingers or settle a hand on her shoulder.

"I need to tell Alex," Kara said and dropped her arms back to her side, pushing off the wall and meeting Lena's eyes. "Soon."

Lena nodded. "I know."

"Like really soon. Tomorrow," Kara settled. "I'm going to ask her to go to lunch tomorrow and I'm just going to say it. Easy."

Kara reached out and Lena took her hand, giving a sad twist of a smile in understanding.

/

Except the next day Alex and Kara met for lunch, and she didn't say it. The words beat against the barricade of her lips, lived on the tip of her tongue as moments collected into days. She didn't say it over coffee in the breakroom the next day, or takeout dinner during a late night at the DEO at the end of the week, or while they were in the car one afternoon when Kara was drained from a fight and too tired to fly.

The scene changed but the story stayed the same, with the truth rattling in Kara's chest but never bounding past her lips. Kara started to splinter—yelling when she didn't mean to, feeling her lip quiver when it shouldn't have, pushing Alex away when all she wanted to do was hide in the warmth of her hugs. Each failed conversation a pickaxe chiseling inside her.

Eventually Kara stopped making promises and Lena stopped asking, at the end of each day, how her time with Alex had gone.

/

Until nearly a month later, when Lena was on the couch, reviewing finance reports on her tablet while Kara watched a movie. With her head on a pillow on Lena's lap, her fingers running through Kara's hair, Kara's breath evened into a steady plateau.

"I set up a sister's night with Alex, tomorrow. I'm going to tell her. For real."

Lena's hand faltered in Kara's hair, pausing over her shoulder, atop the worn fabric of her pajama shirt.

"I'm serious." Kara sat up and let the blankets fall. A chill met Lena's core as they slipped, and Kara's gaze locked onto her own. Determination blazed in Kara's eyes. Rigidity gathered her muscles in defense. "I know I've said it before, but—"

"Kara," Lena smoothed down Kara's hair where it'd been ruffled when she shifted upward. With a soft tilt of her head and sincerity bleeding from her words, Lena promised, "I trust you."

"But, I've messed up more times than I can remember, what if—"

"Don't think like that, love." Lena's hand gravitated from Kara's cheek, down to squeeze her shoulder, settling there like an anchor. "I _know_ how hard it is to initiate change, but the stagnation begins to kill you, too, and Kara, you're suffocating. I can see it in the way you move; I can feel it in the way you breathe."

A glossiness swept across Kara's eyes. Her hand crept up to tangle with Lena's. "It's like a second pulse," Kara admitted. "Always there and racing, beneath everything. And I can't—I can't go on like this."

The softness of Lena's smile, steeled Kara's resolve. "Then you know what you need to do. It's time."

/

Kara placed a box of pizza on the coffee table, beside two cups and plates, and dropped onto the couch beside Alex. Before Alex could ask her what was going on, Kara pushed herself back up again.

She wiped her palms on her jeans, standing between the couch and table, the TV background noise behind her. "I should get more napkins."

She added them to the collection before turning around toward the kitchen again. "Do you want a refill? I can—"

"Kara," Alex straightened and reached out to her sister. A hand on her forearm revealed the hyper-speed shaking of Kara's limbs, too fast to be visible, but perceptible to touch—a fluttering, as though Kara was already preparing to flee. "Sit with me."

The ticking of the neighbor's clock pervaded Kara's ears, the howl of a dog in the street below pounding in her head; the swish of water in pipes joined the cacophony. Squeezing her eyes tight, Kara lowered herself to the couch.

"Okay," she said. Her voice didn't sound like her own and her hands grew foreign, too, as they trailed the edge of the couch as if meeting the fabric for the first time. A ghost of breath swirled in her lungs and choked in her throat. Just like all the times before.

"I—um." Her gaze stuck on her knees, heat rising at the corners. "I—"

The words she wanted to say, needed to say, colligated like wet sediment in her mouth, turning to stone and dropping to her stomach.

Their phones rang at the same time.

Kara's screen shattered under the pressure of her grip. Eyes, wild, flickered from the device to Alex.

The DEO flashed across the screen.

"Answer it," Kara whispered.

Alex winced, but there could have been hundreds of lives counting on that single call, so she accepted, and, upon hearing the location, Kara bolted.

A strained "see you there" carried on the gust of wind funneling through the open window.

/

"All done," Kara said, brushing her hands on her super suit and turning away from the scene before any questions could arise or someone could entangle her in follow-up work. Her emotions had spilled into the fight, taking form of too-hard punches and speed that cracked the sound barrier.

The alien was apprehended before any civilians were injured and the whole ordeal had taken less than thirty minutes, but perspiration caught light at her hairline and her cheeks flushed red and her body shook as if trying to expel excess adrenaline from a gritty fight that didn't exist.

"Supergirl," an agent called, and Kara's head snapped in their direction even as her eyes jumped from one face to the next. "You good?"

She nodded, slowly, without managing eye contact, twisting away from the scene and into an alley drenched in shadow.

"Kara." Alex's voice lofted above the rest. "Wait."

Her hand slinked around Kara's wrist and even though the touch was featherlight, human, against Kara's skin, her insides crumbled. She turned to dust and the ash of it choked up her throat. "I—"

"Kara, _please."_ Her voice cracked.

Kara's pulse thrashed beneath Alex's fingers.

Terror flashed through Kara like an electric wire. A lightning rod of white-hot pulsating fear leaping inside her. "I have to go."

In that moment, under the clouded street lights, there was fear beyond fear and her heart was out of her chest and her blood was gushing in her ear.

She tore her hand from Alex's grip and took off, the night swallowing her whole.

/

All the TVs in all the apartments in all of National City were rehashing the fight. The same video cycled over the screens with shifting commentary. She heard it blaring in her ears as she flew above the skyline, looping so the wind caught her hair and tugged it back.

Lena would see the coverage and a bundle of worry would knot itself in her stomach. With Kara's phone still shattered and dotted with pressure spots, abandoned at her apartment, she took a sharp turn, whizzing past the corner of the nearest building, so quickly flecks of dust joined the residue of the fight smeared across her face.

Kara appeared in Lena's office at L-Corp as a silhouette with crumpling shoulders and wavering legs.

"Kara?" Lena asked, before Kara could step into the light to uncover her face. A breeze swirled through the open balcony door as Lena dropped her pen and pushed back from her desk, standing and making her way to the outline with a cape—fluttering and flapping in the night like a bird with broken wings.

"Are you okay?"

"I didn't tell her," Kara admitted with shame like fire in her chest.

Lena met her in the dark, thumbing away tears and drawing her deep into the infinity of two arms, folded and latched over her hair.

"I don't know what's wrong with me." A sob punctuated the statement and Kara remained rigid beneath Lena's embrace, save the leap of her shoulders.

"Nothing, my darling," Lena promised and stepped back, settling an arm on each side of Kara and looking her in the eye. "Nothing is wrong with you, all right?" Lena's thumb settled on each of Kara's cheekbones. "This is merely a difficult situation and you're doing your best. I know that."

Kara looked down and moved her hand only to swipe at her cheeks—all knuckles and angles and bruising. "I'm going to go," Kara stepped back, eyes still trained on the ground. "I think I just—I want to be alone right now."

"I don't think that's…" Lena shook her head and grimaced, "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Kara whispered, her back already to Lena. "Don't worry about me."

"Call me," Lena requested. "If you need anything or if you change your mind."

Kara nodded and a gust of wind filled the space she'd occupied.

/

Kara's apartment was littered with carnage of her failure—an untouched pizza box, too many napkins, her shattered phone, the wreck of threads she'd pulled loose form a blanket in her waiting—and the place creaked in its emptiness.

The cushions hissed, the legs squeaking as Kara dropped face-first onto the couch. She wiggled an arm under her eyes, burying her head in it, and the other under her ribcage, feeling her diaphragm shudder with each breath.

She stayed like that, as time moved beyond her, until a knock on the door lodged itself into her consciousness. The sink of dread filled her stomach.

Kara lifted her head, chin pressing into the couch as she strained her neck over the arm rest.

"Kara? Can we talk, please?"

For one more moment, Kara simply breathed in and out, wedged in the suffocating safety of her secret.

"It's unlocked," she said finally, pulling herself upward and tucking her knees toward her chest. This was it. She could feel time being severed into the before and the after. The axe was in her hands. A lump rose in her throat as she swallowed. "You can come in."

The door opened, and Alex entered and crossed the room, plucking two pillows off the couch as she passed and dropping one in Kara's lap before plopping beside her.

Alex leaned into the back of the couch, pulling her own pillow toward her as she looked at Kara.

"Talk to me," Alex said softly, nudging her socked foot against Kara's knee. Alex's head tilted into the cushion, frame turned to face Kara. "You know I'm always going to be there for you."

A sharp inhale slit through Kara's lips. "I don't know how to say this right." She shook her head.

"Then don't worry about saying it right, just say it." Alex reached out a hand and Kara took it with shaking fingers, in doing so, letting the axe slip from her grip.

"I'm dating Lena, I- I love her, Alex, more-more than a friend," Kara admitted and the tears started to fall, blurring Alex's nod; now that Kara had reached the top of the mountain, she tumbled downward at the mercy of gravity. "I-she- I'm bi, and I- I don't know why it took me so long to tell you. I mean, I knew you'd be okay with it, obviously- but I didn't want to put this on you or- or impede on your thing or- or whatever - so I didn't tell you." A gasp for breath chiseled its way between her speaking, and maybe if she didn't stop, she didn't have to risk something going wrong. "I knew it was wrong to keep a secret, but every time I tried, the words got stuck. I'm sorry, Alex," she murmured, the words a waterfall. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, I'm sorry."

"Kara," Alex whispered and spread her hands to encompass both of Kara's. "You have nothing to apologize for. At all."

Kara peaked at Alex's eyes, saw nothing but warm brown and her own reflection shimmering back at her.

"And I love you," Alex continued. "Always. No matter what."

"Thanks, Alex." Kara exhaled and Alex collected her in a hug, their chests pressed together and their hearts close.

"I'm so proud of you." Alex's breath tickled Kara's ear. "And I'm so happy for you."

Kara squeezed her back and if the force took Alex's breath away a little, she didn't say anything. Instead, Alex ran a hand over Kara's back, feeling as it's shaking slowed, then stilled, with time.

"Ya know you really can tell me anything, right?" Alex asked after Kara's head had lolled to Alex's side, soothed by the hand carding through her hair.

Kara nodded, twirling a loose string from the pillow in her lap with her pointer finger. "I know. It was just hard to... to..."

"Make that decisions? To split time in two?" Alex supplied and Kara nodded.

"Exactly." She laid her head back against Alex, nestling closer. "It feels surreal," she admitted. "To finally have it done."

Alex squeezed her hand. "I'm not surprised, about you and Lena."

Kara propped herself up on one arm. Brows wrinkled in the blue TV light as she turned her gaze onto Alex. "What do you mean?"

"I _mean_ , you guys are practically perfect for each other. There's no missing that."

"Oh." Kara's cheeks tinged pink and she lowered her eyes, a smile flickering at her lips. "She is pretty great."

"You both are." Alex pressed a kiss to Kara's temple.

As Kara wrapped an arm around her sister, her phone vibrated at her side.

Kara squinted. "It's Lena."

"Oh, of course, _it's Lena_ ," Alex teased and received a swat from Kara against her own.

"Shut up," Kara said, with a smile on her face, so deep her cheeks hurt and the lightness sparked up inside her like fireworks at the normalcy of Alex teasing her about someone she loved. About Lena.

Kara let her eyes trail down to her phone where a text from Lena asked if she was okay, if she needed anything. The heart emoji had Kara's warming inside her.

/

At 11:11 PM on a Monday, Lena's phone buzzed with two messages from Kara.

 **I'm okay, I promise. I'll call you in the morning. I talked with Alex**

 **She knows and it all feels right. Thank you, for everything**

A myriad of heart and rainbow emojis set a smile on Lena's face for the rest of the night.


End file.
